Christchurch's
Mayor, Lianne Dalziel, was recently quoted as saying: "What I would like
is to be able to have an intelligent conversation without somebody just
standing there with a little placard in their hand saying 'no asset sales' or
'keep our assets'".
Lianne
must have been having a senior moment because Keep Our Assets Canterbury (KOA)
was never so coy as to muck around with "little placards".
On
several occasions we went right into the Christchurch City Council's Chamber
during Council meetings with a great big banner saying "Keep Our
Assets".
Joking
aside, KOA is pleased that the City Council has passed its Long Term Plan with
no asset sales included.
Obviously
the Mayor is not so happy.
We
remind her that Christchurch has very recently had "an intelligent
conversation" about asset sales.
It
was called the 2016 local body election, where KOA ran John Minto as our
Mayoral candidate on a "No Assets Sales" platform.
Obviously,
Lianne won the Mayoralty but enough Christchurch residents and ratepayers voted
for John, and the Council candidates who also opposed asset sales, for the
message to sink home.
The
people of Christchurch delivered their intelligent answer.
They
didn't want assets sold.
This
is deja vu all over again.
The
arguments presented in 2015/16 for asset sales are the same ones as
being presented now - that Christchurch can't afford the rebuild costs and is
going into too much debt.
The
arguments for keeping our assets are the same as then.
Put
simply - that the people of Christchurch are better off with those assets than
without them.
And,
once they're gone, they're gone.
One
obvious solution is to renegotiate the onerous cost share agreement imposed on
the previous Bob Parker Council by the previous Key government, forcing
Christchurch ratepayers into paying for various anchor project white elephants.
We
keep being told that what is now called the "global settlement" is
being prepared between this Government and the Council.
But
no details are being made public.
The
whitest of the white elephants is the stadium, for which the Council has
budgeted $253 million and brought it forward by two years in its list of
priorities.
There's
an obvious candidate for saving a cool quarter of a billion dollars or, at
least, putting it further down the list of priorities until the city can afford
it and more pressing needs have been met.
By
contrast the Council has budgeted a measly $30 million for repairing or
replacing Council housing damaged in the quakes.
Those
priorities are the wrong way around - the Crusaders have got a home, at the
temporary Addington stadium; the Council needs to prioritise those that need a
home.
Put
a roof over their head before putting a roof over a stadium.
To
add insult to injury, the Rugby Union - which will be the biggest single
beneficiary of the stadium - is refusing to contribute one cent to its
construction.
Councillor
Raf Manji has resurrected the idea of partial asset sales, specifically by
listing the airport company and Enable (the city's broadband network company)
on the sharemarket.
Why
would the city sell assets that make money - Christchurch Airport is a
heavily used cash cow - for ones that don't make money, such as a stadium that
will sit unused and generating no income for a lot of the time?
That's
voodoo economics.
Nothing
has changed as far as KOA is concerned.
The
case for keeping our assets is as strong as ever.
